Sleep hygiene is simply the maintenance of good sleep habits to ensure your child's health and well-being. How much sleep does your child need? The National Sleep Foundation recommends that between eighteen months and three years of age, kids get between twelve and fourteen hours each night. The required amount of sleep decreases with age. Three- to five-year-olds require between eleven and thirteen hours, and five- to twelve-year-olds need nine to eleven hours. Once your child hits the teen years, he needs an average of nine and a quarter hours of sleep each night.

To ensure your child gets the rest she needs, make sure her sleep environment is designed for a restful night's sleep. A quiet, comfortable, and cool bedroom is important. So are regularly established and consistent times for going to sleep and waking up.

Ensuring Good Sleep Habits

No matter what your child's age, there are some basic tenets you can follow to try and ensure she gets a good night's sleep. From the time she first sleeps through the night, you should work towards establishing a regular time for bed and a standard bedtime routine. Of course the routine will evolve over time, as your sixteen-year-old will probably not appreciate a bedtime story, but the basic purpose — of winding down your child and easing her out of the activities of the day and into the relaxation of sleep — remains the same.

Start the wind-down time about thirty minutes to an hour before bedtime. All television watching, video games, and physically vigorous play should stop, and your child should redirect her focus to things like reading or quiet play. If she requests a snack, make sure it doesn't contain any caffeine, and keep it light. Dairy foods are often good choices because they contain the natural sleep-enhancing amino acid tryptophan. A bath is sometimes a good way to relax your younger children for bedtime. Brushing teeth, washing up, and using the bathroom can be part of the ritual that signals your child that sleep-time is approaching.

Finally, try to keep your child's wake-up time as consistent as her bedtime. Sleeping in until noon on the weekend can throw off her internal clock and make it difficult to get back on track during the week. However, if she loses some sleep time during the week due to a big event, do let her catch an extra few hours' shut-eye when she can.

Circadian Rhythms

Circadian rhythms — also known variously as an internal clock, biological timer, or diurnal cycle — govern your child's sleep cycle. They are physiological patterns of sleep and wakefulness loosely based on a twenty-four — hour cycle and regulated by cues of light and darkness. When your child goes to bed late repeatedly or has difficulty falling asleep for whatever reason, he can unintentionally reset his circadian rhythm and have a hard time returning to an appropriate sleep schedule.

If your child is having problems getting to sleep, or she is suffering from excessive sleepiness during the day that isn't apnea related (described in the section titled “Sleep Apnea and Childhood Obesity,” on page 213), her circadian rhythms may be off cycle and in need of resetting. Don't try to fix the problem by sending her to bed early. Regulating the time your child wakes up in the morning is the most important factor in correcting a circadian rhythm disorder. Wake her at a fixed time, even if she fell asleep late the night before, and expose her to bright lights for about forty-five minutes after waking (either sunlight or artificial light) to signal her body to reset the clock.